Burning the Ships: Transforming Your Company's Culture Through Intellectual Property Strategy

Now in paperback, the inside story of "the greatest transformation of Microsoft since it became a multinational company" Marshall Phelps's remarkable eyewitness story offers lessons for any executive struggling with today's innovation and intellectual property challenges. Burning the Ships offers Phelps's dramatic behind-the-scenes account of how he overcame internal resistance and got Microsoft to open up channels of collaboration with other firms. Discover the never-before-told details of Microsoft's secret two-year negotiations with Red Hat and Novell that led to the world's first intellectual property peace treaty and technical collaboration with the open source community Witness the sometimes-nervous support Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer gave to Phelps in turning their company around 180 degrees from market bully to collaborative industry partner Offers an extraordinary behind-the-scenes view of the high-level deliberations of the company's senior-most executives, the internal debates and conflicts among executives and rank-and-file employees alike over the company's new collaborative direction There are lessons in this book for executives in every industry-most especially on the role that intellectual property can play in liberating previously untapped value in a company and opening up powerful new business opportunities in today's era of "open innovation." Here is a powerful inside account of the dawn of a new era at what is arguably the most powerful technology company on earth.

Table of Contents:
About the Authors. Acknowledgments. Introduction. Chapter 1 The Collaboration Imperative. Chapter 2 Like Cortez Burning His Ships. Chapter 3 Money Isn't Money Anymore. Chapter 4 A Very Secret Mission. Chapter 5 Leadership Starts at the Top. Chapter 6 The Road Ahead (with Apologies to Bill Gates). Index.

About the Author :
Marshall Phelps is Microsoft's corporate Vice President for Intellectual Property Policy and Strategy and is responsible for setting the global intellectual property strategies and policies for the company. He also works with governments, other companies in the technology industry, and outside institutions to broaden awareness of intellectual property issues. Phelps joined Microsoft in June 2003 after a twenty-eight-year career at IBM Corp., where he served as vice president for intellectual property and licensing and built its world-leading $2-billion-a-year licensing program. Phelps is an executive in residence at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and was elected to the initial class of the Intellectual Property Hall of Fame in 2006. He may be reached at mphelps@microsoft.com. David Kline is a journalist, author, and intellectual property consultant who has earned acclaim for his unique ability to demystify complex IP issues and explain them in a clear and relevant manner to a broad business audience. His bestselling 2000 book, Rembrandts in the Attic from Harvard Business School Press, is considered a seminal work in the field of intellectual property strategy within corporate America. As a journalist, Kline has covered some of the world's most critical wars, famines, and other crises for the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, NBC and CBS News, the Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Wired, and other major media. He may be reached at dkline@well.com.

Review :
"Phelps (corporate vice president for intellectual property policy & strategy, Microsoft) and journalist Kline (Rembrandts in the Attic) have written a brisk and engaging book about Microsoft's radical overhauling of its intellectual property (IP) strategy. Phelps, the principal architect of this new strategy, gives the reader an insider's perspective on his struggle to overcome Microsoft's traditional use of its intellectual property as a "weapon" against competitors and to transform the company into a key player in the new business environment of "open innovation….the book is worth reading for its portrait of a major corporation undergoing massive change and for its lucid explanations of IP business strategy. Recommended for serious business readers." (Library Journal, July 15, 2009) "Could Microsoft’s ability to produce intellectual property be the company’s future salvation? A few weeks ago, I complained that Microsoft wasn’t innovating. Yet the book Burning the Ships talks of Microsoft’s burgeoning intellectual property treasure chest. Burning the Ships shows the way to another outlet for Microsoft’s innovation. Instead of trying to hold their intellectual property close to the vest, Microsoft is beginning to open up the IP treasure chest and let others try to do the work of bringing those products to market." (InformationWeek, June 1, 2009)